Flight.
When I come home, it’s always the both of them that pick me up.
They look smaller than I remember. Older than I remember.
My mom, frail with fragile hair and a tomato nose, is sitting on the grated airport seat staring into carousel 4B. It’s vacant and dim and antiseptic fluorescent. She’s sniffling in between breaths, allergies.
The buzz of a new luggage cycle starts and we both jump. She hasn’t seen me yet, but I see her. I lurk in the corner of baggage claim, stalking my last bits of freedom. “This is it for the next two weeks, did you really relish that independence?”
I breathe out and round the corner, she spots me as she blows her nose.
“Sha!”.
“You don’t have to yell, I see you. We’re the only ones here.”
I meet her at the carousel. “Hi.”
Her freckled face looks tired. She looks like she’s been plucked from bed and wrapped in a down comforter with arms. I move towards her, place my arm over her shoulder, press our cheeks together.
Our hugs are vacant.
When we touch, it feels like two magnets of the same polarity; close to connecting, but deflecting at the last second. Just as I’m ready to settle into her embrace, and sink into her scent, I feel a tug. I know she’ll always be the first to pull away, like how she knows I’ll always let go. Despite our best efforts at defying our nature we succumb to the learned grooves of our behavior. The comforting gap bridged by “almost”.
“How was your flight?”, She asks.
“It was OK.”
I look down. She sneezes.
And what starts as a pause in conversation expands into something more. This refrain from words encapsulates what our relationship has always been: Short on words. Short on gestures. Overflowing with love, but misplaced somewhere between the time and the distance and in the pockets where she keeps tissues and $20, in case I need it.
My dad is getting a baggage claim Dunkin’ Donuts. They’ve been up since 4AM and it shows. They both have matching puffy jackets with complementing puffy eyes. Their movements are slow, calculated, afraid.
He walks towards me, coffee in hand. “Hi baby.”, He says, as he puts down his drink and reaches out his arms. I gravitate towards him and sink into his cheek. My air is stale from a 6-hour flight and a saliva encrusted faux-fur neck pillow. I smell like 11PM House Red and 12AM Bugles; my breakfast turned lunch, with the time-zone change.
His air is warm from a 6-hour sleep. He smells like 6AM roasted hazelnut coffee; his beverage turned breakfast, with my pick-up.
“I missed you”, we both say. Unlike my mom, I know my dad will stay.